Dan Carden: The Secretary of State will know that I wrote to all energy companies before the practice was suspended. The mixed bag of responses showed that a voluntary approach simply will not work. Utilita chief executive officer Bill Bullen said:
“We will not commit to ending the forcible use of prepay. That course of action is simply not sustainable.”
There is a suspension until 31 March, and compensation has been talked about. However, all that is about is Ofgem asking companies to look at whether the forced instalment was appropriate. Companies know that Ofgem is toothless. It is down to the Secretary of State to ban this practice and to set out how compensation will be given out.

Graham Stuart: Alternative fuel users have received significant support this winter: first, by direct subsidy of their electricity bills per unit; secondly, through £400 of additional payments across the winter; and thirdly, by £200 paid automatically, for the vast majority, by their electricity supplier, which began on 6 February and finished, I am pleased to say, today. A small minority will need to apply and that portal will open soon.

Andrew Bowie: Yes. Representing a rural constituency myself, I understand just how important fertiliser manufacturers are. The energy bill discount scheme will start on 1 April, providing eligible businesses with a discount on high energy bills until 31 March 2024. The list of eligible sectors has been published, and I am delighted to confirm that it will include manufacturers of fertilisers and nitrogen compounds.

Angela Eagle: I speak as a current serving Member of Labour’s NEC who has some insight—more from history than personal experience—of the kinds of times that Betty went through when she was a servant of the Labour party NEC. I also speak as someone whose first vote in this House was actually in that Speaker’s election, so I started off pretty well in the 1992 to 1997 Parliament with a win, but I do not think that we won a single vote after that for the length of the Parliament.
Betty was, as we have heard, born to a working-class family of textile workers in Dewsbury, the daughter of a millhand and a weaver. She later said:
“I came out of the womb into the Labour movement.”
Her mum and dad, Mary and Archie, were both members of the Labour party and the textile workers union when she was born. Despite being a fun-loving teenager, she was—perhaps inevitably, given that background—always serious about her politics. She said that her parents were politically minded because they were mill workers in Dewsbury during the depression years.
Betty was famously a keen dancer, as we have heard, and a chorus girl who, rumour had it, even performed at the pantomime. But in the end, she chose Parliament, and she persisted so that, finally, Parliament also chose her. She did not become an MP easily, as we have heard—no woman did back then. It took her five attempts over 16 years before she was finally successful  as the 95th woman ever elected to this House of Commons. During that struggle, she even began referring to herself as
“the girl most unlikely to succeed”,
but on 24 May 1973, she was successfully elected in a by-election, and she served her voters faithfully in the constituency of West Bromwich, and its successor constituency, West Bromwich, West, until 2000. I certainly do not envy my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar), who had to try to get local coverage in the newspapers with Betty also vying for that space.
The Parliament that Betty entered in 1973 was almost entirely bereft of women. When she first came to this place, only 4%, or 19, of the 635 MPs were women. That figure was to fall even lower in the February 1974 election—of which today is the anniversary, by the way—which returned 23 women, of whom 13 were Labour and, of course, Betty was one. Three other women were elected in that election and I think we ought to remember them. Maureen Colquhoun was of the same generation as Betty, and although she had a very different parliamentary career, hers was equally as important. Jo Richardson was also returned, as was Audrey Wise. They were all formidable Labour women. It just shows what you had to be in that time to get anywhere near this place.
When I was elected to Parliament in 1992, my first ever vote was in that historic Speaker’s election, which was only the third in a century. As we have heard, Betty was the first—and, so far, the only—woman to be elected Speaker in 700 years of parliamentary history. It is a tribute to her personal qualities and the regard in which she was held that she broke that glass ceiling when women made up less than 10% of that House of Commons. It is perhaps why she appealed in this place, when we were all listening, for people to vote for what she was and what she represented rather than for how she was born. That was, I think, a pitch to the 90% of people in this place, during that election, who were not women.
Betty was not John Major’s choice or the Conservative choice in that election—as we have heard, Peter Brooke was—but 72 Members of the governing party voted for her, which just shows her reach. When John Major realised that his pitch for Peter Brooke had failed, and that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) said in her tribute, people were very happy about it, he was extremely graceful in his tribute to her. He observed that she had “made history”, and said to her:
“The House trusts you. It believes that you enjoy in abundance the qualities necessary to protect and sustain the House, and to safeguard its rights.”—[Official Report, 27 April 1992; Vol. 207, c. 20.]
She repaid that trust in spades in the eight years during which she presided.
Betty was, as has been referred to in some tributes, the owner of a famously loud voice, which, of course, you need if you are in the Chair, Mr Speaker. She stamped her personality on the role and became a national treasure. She got rid of the wig, rightly assuming that her abundant shock of impeccably sculptured grey hair was a suitable alternative. She presided with, I think, great authority, wit and charm over some very difficult periods—not least the trench warfare over the  Maastricht treaty. She was probably the nearest thing to regal that any non-royal could be, which befits the highest commoner in the land, which of course our Speaker is. She was always impeccably fashionable, as perhaps befits the daughter of textile workers. She was clear in interviews that her dress sense had come directly from the expectations of her father for her to be presentable as she was growing up.
Betty was, in private, an astute observer of the political scene, personally kind and thoughtful, and good at putting new Members at their ease while keeping them on the straight and narrow as far as procedure went. She was a stickler for tradition and a staunch protector of the rights of the House, as we have heard. There was a moan of great shock when she announced her resignation in 2000. Nobody had expected it. I was in the Chamber when she announced it, and there was dismay around the place, which forced her in the end to stop speaking from her prepared notes and just say, “Be happy for me!” She had decided to go at a time of her choosing after feeling that she had served the House to the best of her ability for as long she wished to do so.
Betty regarded herself as a democrat. She was pro-EU, as I think the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said in his remarks. She was a child of the Labour party. She was a Labour icon. She was, as I mentioned, one of that group of formidable women who came into the House in the 1970s. She was, above all else, a servant of Parliament. We will not see her like again, but those who knew her know what a privilege that was and what a magnificent and unique parliamentarian we were lucky enough to know and work alongside.

Margaret Hodge: Always. Betty said to him:
“This is so time-consuming. Come on, Mr. Hughes: spit it out.”—[Official Report, 18 March 1997; Vol. 292, c. 719.]
He then sat down, completely deflated.
I also remember that she loved having good fun. I am lucky enough to play the piano, and we had a sing-song in her rooms where we sang “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag” and “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”. That was another side of Betty that we all felt warm about.
My predecessor was Jo Richardson, who was a close friend of Betty Boothroyd. She used to chat to me a lot about Jo when I was trying to get to know my predecessor better. We named a school after her, the Jo Richardson Community School in Barking. Betty graciously came and opened the school and enthralled all the children with her theatricality.
The final thing I want to say is that she was always kind. She was kind to all of us personally. I remember that when I was having a particularly difficult time in the House in relation to fighting the antisemitism in the Labour party, she was one of the most supportive women to me; she gave me the courage to be resilient in that situation. Betty earned her place in our history books. She was a vibrant, passionate and strong woman. She loved her life in Parliament, and we loved her.

Maria Eagle: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to increase the minimum required height of guarding in multi-storey car parks; to make provision about increasing the height of guarding in existing multi-storey car parks; to require 24 hour staffing of multi-storey car parks; and for connected purposes.
Unfortunately, I never met my constituent Gabriel Jack Santer, known as Gabe. He died, aged just 15, on 3 October 2020 when he fell from the top of an open-roofed multi-storey car park. It was a Q-Park on the corner of Hanover Street and Gradwell Street in Liverpool city centre on a bleak, wet and windy Saturday night. The inquest at the end of January 2021 recorded an open verdict.
Gabriel was, by all accounts, a lovely, popular, friendly and lively boy. His teachers thought him destined for stage or screen, because he was a natural entertainer with a fine sense of humour. He was kind, never cruel; he was a sensitive young man, who was solicitous and caring. He was friends with many and scorned by none of his peers at school or from skateboarding. Now he is gone and very much missed by his family and friends.
Agonisingly, Gabe’s family will never know what was in his mind around the time of his fall from that place, but they know one thing for sure—his death was as preventable as it was senseless. Had the barriers atop the car park been higher or designed to prevent people falling or climbing over them, Gabe could not have fallen as he did on that night. Had there been staff on site to watch what was going on and to check on safety, he would not have fallen.
As it happens, the barriers in the place from which Gabe fell were a few inches below the legal minimum. Even so, almost two and a half years later, there is no indication that Q-Park is to be pursued by any enforcement authority for that failure to adhere to the guidance in approved document K of the building regulations, even though it led to the death of a 15-year-old boy.
Gabe’s father, my constituent Johnny Santer, is determined to ensure that Gabe’s death will not be in vain. He wants to make sure that no other person finds it so shockingly easily possible to fall or jump from an open-roofed multi-storey car park, and I want to help him achieve that aim. That is why I seek the leave of the House to bring in a Bill, the Multi-Storey Car Parks (Safety) Bill, to ensure that the minimum height of barriers is increased substantially; that existing car parks have to be retrofitted with safer barriers adhering to new, higher standards; and that provision is made for the staffing of such sites to ensure that people do not fall.
After Gabriel’s father came to see me following Gabriel’s inquest, I was shocked to discover that the building regulations’ requirements for the height of barriers set a minimum height for guarding the rooftop of only 1.1 metres, or just around 3 feet. That is too low to stop anyone from accidentally falling, and it is certainly too low to stop anyone who is determined to jump. Multi-storey car parks must be attractive to those seeking to take  their own life. They are easily accessible; one can reach the top floor easily, without needing to explain one’s presence; they are generally unstaffed, so there is unlikely to be anybody asking, “What’s going on?”; and the barriers only have to be 3 feet high to meet the requirements set out in the building regulations. In addition, such low barriers make it easy to fall accidentally in certain circumstances.
So how much of a problem is there—how general is it? The answer is not entirely clear. I tabled a written question, and was told that the Government do not collect figures to indicate how many people die each year in the way that Gabriel did. In a written answer on 5 September 2022, the Government confirmed that they are
“aware of some fatalities”,
but did not state how many or give me a number. However, it seems to be a more frequent occurrence than one might hope or expect. A simple search of newspaper reports, while hardly comprehensive, none the less indicates that there is a real problem. It shows that there were at least 17 deaths by falling from multi-storey car parks in England over a 12-month period—in 2022. There may well be more deaths that have gone unreported in the media, and there are also likely to be instances of very serious injury caused by people falling or jumping from those easily accessible, high and dangerous places.
If Mr Santer’s experience is anything to go by, owners and operators of multi-storey car parks are not exactly open to the idea of increasing safety measures above the minimum requirements set out in approved document K. Gabriel fell from a Q-Park roof. Q-Park is the third largest car park operator in Europe, with over 3,500 car parks under its control, yet when Mr Santer asked that company for all the information it held about his son by way of a freedom of information request, he was told that such requests need only be met in respect of “living persons”—what a shockingly insensitive response in the circumstances. When my office got involved, Mr Santer did receive some basic information thereafter, but it did not take long for Q-Park and its associated companies to shut up shop, demanding that Mr Santer communicate with them only via their lawyers.
It has become clear that Q-Park is not willing to take any voluntary steps to ensure that barriers are at a height that would prevent falling and jumping from its roofs, nor does it seem inclined to do anything much to improve safety unless it is made to by a change in the law. Indeed, there was a death by falling from the rooftop of a Q-Park in Sheffield in May 2012, which resulted in a regulation 28 report to prevent future deaths being sent by the Sheffield coroner to Q-Park Ltd and Sheffield City Council’s planning department in May 2014. That report set out concerns about the low height of the barriers and the ease of using the crash barrier by the perimeter wall as a step up to the top of the perimeter wall. Despite Sheffield City Council offering to facilitate improvements, and nine years after that prevention of future deaths report was sent by the Sheffield coroner to the company, Q-Park is still refusing to make any of the changes mentioned in that report when pressed by Mr Santer, and that is not encouraging. Gabriel died six years after the report was sent to Q-Park, which had done nothing to deal with the issues it highlighted. That shows that Q-Park will only do the absolute minimum to comply with guidance on safety.
It is therefore up to us in this place to require that improvements be made to the safety of multi-storey car parks. It seems clear that, if Q-Park is to take those safety concerns seriously and finally increase the height of its barriers, the legal minimum height must be increased, and a requirement to retrofit existing car parks must be included in the law. In addition, having car parks staffed can only increase safety levels. If Mr Santer is to achieve his goal of ensuring that Gabriel did not die in vain and that some good can come out of this terrible tragedy, the law must be changed. It is for us to do so.
In a written answer from June 2020, the Government confirmed that they have no current plans to make any such changes. It is in those circumstances that I seek leave to bring forward legislation to increase the safety of guarding at multi-storey car parks, as I have outlined. Should I receive permission to introduce such a Bill, and should that Bill receive Royal Assent, I think it would be appropriate to refer to it as Gabe’s law. He was a fine young lad with so much promise, who died too soon and so needlessly.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Maria Eagle, Dame Angela Eagle, Sir George Howarth, Ian Byrne, Kim Johnson, Peter Dowd, Mick Whitley, Tony Lloyd, Barbara Keeley, Sir Mark Hendrick, Mike Amesbury and Ashley Dalton present the Bill.
Maria Eagle accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 March, and to be printed (Bill 256).

Wes Streeting: I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. We delivered the highest levels of patient satisfaction in the history of the national health service. Now patient satisfaction is at its lowest level since at least 1997. There is a second basic promise of the NHS which, if it is not broken, is under attack today like it has not been for years. When I went through my treatment for kidney cancer I had lots to think and worry about—every cancer patient does—but the one thing I never had to worry about was the bill. That is the thing that people love most about the national health service, but those who have never believed that healthcare should be provided to all, regardless of their means, are using this crisis to attack that principle. The right hon. Member for Gainsborough called the NHS the
“the last example of collective planning and socialist central control”—[Official Report, 22 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 840.]
and even today called on the Health and Social Care Secretary to look at insurance based systems instead.
The hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has a Bill before the House this week that would extend user charging. The Prime Minister himself pledged last summer to charge patients who miss GP appointments, although he has since ditched that pledge—indeed, he has ditched an awful lot since he became Prime Minister. Two former Health Secretaries have joined in. The right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) has proposed charging for missed GP appointments. The right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) went further and suggested charging patients to see a GP, or even to attend A&E. If he were here, I would happily give way to hear an explanation as to how that would work. The most deeply cynical thing about this, is that the right hon. Members for West Suffolk and for Bromsgrove are the people who bear much of the responsibility for the mess we are in today. They ran down the NHS. They refused to train the staff needed to treat patients on time. Now they say that timely care, free at the point of use, as we enjoyed 13 years ago, and as we have enjoyed for much of the past 75 years, is no longer possible—that we cannot afford it any more, that it is not achievable. That regressive, miserabilist argument cannot be allowed to win. Not only is it unjust, but it is wrong, so let us take it on in its own terms.
Why do patients who are ill enough to need to see a doctor miss appointments? Very often it is because the appointment clashes with work, they are unable to  travel, they did not receive the letter, or it arrived too late. The answer is to change the archaic and maddening way that patients are forced to book appointments, and build a new system around patient convenience. If patients could choose whether to have an appointment face-to-face or over the phone, if they did not have to wait on hold at 8 am to book an appointment, then wait for a call back that can come at any time of the day, fewer appointments would be missed. Why is it that those who attack NHS managers as being wasteful bureaucrats want to install far more of them? Because that is what an insurance-based system would mean. One-third of US healthcare costs go to insurance company overheads and providers billing patients. Is that really what the proponents of an insurance system want—more administration, more bureaucracy, and less money spent on delivering healthcare?
What would happen if we charged patients to see a GP? People would stay away. In some cases, yes, that would mean people who did not need to see a GP would not take up an appointment. But it would also mean that many people who needed to see a GP but could not afford the price stayed away. More conditions would go undiagnosed, and left to become more serious until the patient had to go to hospital instead. It would mean worse outcomes for patients, a less healthy society, and greater cost to the taxpayer. While we might save £39 on a GP appointment, it costs far more for patients to go to A&E, which costs £359 on average. Not only are those proposals unfair, but they would mean more bureaucracy, more late diagnosis, more expensive and less effective hospital treatment—exactly the opposite of what the NHS needs. Such proposals are wrong on fairness, wrong on efficiency, and wrong on health outcomes. Those in government have no plan for the NHS, and there are even worse ideas sitting on their Back Benches.

Helen Whately: On the contrary, we have already made progress on some things in our social care White Paper published just over a year ago. We will soon publish next steps, particularly focused on workforce reforms. I have been talking to several stakeholders involved in exactly that area over the last few weeks. If the hon. Lady is patient she will see some of that coming forward.
I was talking about some of the things that we have done to vastly increase the number of healthcare professionals in the NHS. As part of our ambitions for the future, more than 26,000 students were accepted on to nursing and midwifery courses in England last year—a 28% increase on 2019. We are on track to meet our manifesto commitment of 50,000 more nurses by 2024. Much as we continue to strive to go further and faster, those are the figures as they stand. We might wish to make a comparison with Labour-controlled Wales, though it is sometimes hard to do so because it does not collect crucial data such as vacancy rates. One has to wonder why. That is the same Labour-run Wales where patients are twice as likely to be waiting for treatment as in England. Some 50,000 people are currently waiting over two years, while here in England we eliminated two-year waits last year.
I will move on from the situation in Wales, as I am sure Opposition Members will be glad to do so. The Leader of the Opposition has said that he thinks we are hiring too many people from overseas in health and care. The same gentleman spent several years campaigning for a second referendum on freedom of movement. Whatever his views this week, it is the work of a  responsible Government to look at every available option to give this country the health and care workforce that it needs. Alongside training more doctors and nurses, recruiting from overseas and giving people from other countries a chance to work in the NHS is the right thing to do.

Aaron Bell: The Minister mentioned non-dom status under the previous Labour Government, and what they said about it. Is she aware that Alistair Darling said that
“such a charge could discourage men and women—doctors and nurses, business men and women—from coming to this country…and we do not want to turn them away”?—[Official Report, 9 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 171.]
Gordon Brown considered a five-year cap and abandoned it. Ed Balls said that it would end up “costing Britain money”. The supposed heir to Blair is sitting at the Opposition Dispatch Box, opposite the Minister. Is it not surprising that he has not learned more lessons from new Labour?

Mick Whitley: I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I would like to begin by placing on  record my solidarity with the junior doctors who are set to stage three days of strike action over pay later this month, as well as with members of the ambulance service whose dispute is still ongoing.
The Royal College of Nursing has now suspended its planned strike action to allow for the commencement of pay negotiations with the Government. There can be no doubt that our nurses deserve a fair pay rise that truly reflects the extraordinary work they do, but I must warn the Health Secretary that the cost of living crisis is being felt in every profession in the NHS at the moment, and I hope he will give serious consideration to the warnings issued by other health unions regarding the dangers of entering into unilateral talks with a single union. He must understand that any deal he reaches with the RCN will have broader implications for the entire “Agenda for Change” pay band system and risks prolonging disputes with other parties even further. I urge him to act in the best interests of patients, health workers and the NHS itself by inviting all unions that are in dispute around the table and by working to find a resolution on an NHS-wide basis.
I have been proud to stand with striking health workers on their picket lines over the last few months and to learn more about what has driven them to take strike action, some for the first time in their lives. In every instance, pay has been the immediate catalyst for a dispute. Far too many people working in our NHS are struggling to make ends meet, and the scourge of low pay is deterring far too many bright and determined young people from seeking a career in the health service in the first place.
However, while the cost of living crisis was an issue for everyone I spoke to, most people seemed more concerned with the state of the NHS itself than with their own personal circumstances. They had got used to real-terms pay cuts under the past 13 years of Conservative misgovernment, but none had seen the NHS in such a state as it is today, crippled by gaping staff shortages, crumbling facilities and the highest backlog in its history.
Those discussions led me to reflect on how much has changed in the 13 years that the Conservative party has been in charge of our health service. Conservative Members may not want to admit it, but when Labour left power, our national health service was world leading by any metric. In fact, a 2010 Commonwealth Fund report singled out the NHS for its efficiency and shorter waiting times. That is a far cry from today when 7.2 million patients are being prevented from moving on with their lives because they are waiting for treatment, and delays in emergency care cause hundreds of deaths every week.
In 1997, it fell to the Labour party to save a health service that had been driven to its knees by the mismanagement, arrogance and carelessness of the   Conservative party—and so it proves again today. The plan that has been put to the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), the shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, will help to lay the solid foundations for the recovery and revival of the NHS. I hope that when the Chancellor comes before this House to deliver the Budget, he looks as favourably on it as he did when it was first announced, when he called for it to be adopted
“on the basis that smart governments always nick the best ideas of their opponents.”
In recent years, he has made great political capital out of his support for the NHS, even if that has often been at odds with his deeply questionable record as Health Secretary. On 15 March, he has the opportunity to show that he cares more for nurses than for the super-rich by backing Labour’s plans to end non-dom status.
It seems increasingly likely that soon enough, Labour will be responsible for the stewardship of our health service, so I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North not to let his ambitions falter. These plans are undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but it is also crucial to engage meaningfully with those on the NHS frontline about what more needs to be done to support the NHS workforce in the immediate term.
In that vein, I ask my hon. Friend and the Secretary of State to listen to the EveryDoctor campaign group about its practitioner-led plan to revive the NHS, which includes steps to strengthen mental health support for NHS staff; to remove the locum fee caps that restrict our ability to maintain safe staffing levels during periods of extreme crisis; and to cut red tape in the Home Office so that people can start the job that they came to this country to do. I also ask my hon. Friend to guarantee that confronting the immediate pressures facing the NHS workforce will not prevent our party in government from making the bold, structural reforms that we promised in our last manifesto, including ending privatisation in the NHS.

That the draft Electricity Supplier Obligations (Green Excluded Electricity) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 8 February, be approved.—(Ruth Edwards.)
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

That the draft Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention: Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 9 February, be approved.—(Ruth Edwards.)
Question agreed to.